Quite unlike the noble and esteemed religion of erotic dancing girls
Erotic dancing girls = 7th Heaven...
and an empty wallet at the end of the night after you've been endlessly and most cruelly teased by their divine wiles, which is its own kind of living
Hell.
Are they really so noble and esteemed, after all? I think they are fallen angels, those delightful dancing girls whom you worship. (But I'm sure you know that already.)
They promise heaven but giveth hell.
Just trying to look out for you man (and madly jealous, obviously, that my prayer-time isn't
half as exciting as yours must be.
Ejaculatory Prayer has taken on a whole new level of meaning for me now:
In Christian piety, an ejaculation, sometimes known as ejaculatory prayer or aspiration, is a very short prayer often attached as a form of pious devotion.
I told you before, your a bad influence. Good Catholic boy that I am, I need to get to confession now real quick....).
the Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Baha'i faiths do not seem to make spiritual or mystical enlightenment a core goal or teaching of their faiths.
Now onto far less important and wholesome matters......I personally disagree with your interpretation of the "
core teachings" of Christianity - albeit I'm excluding Protestantism almost entirely from the equation when I say this, and thinking about this from an Orthodox/Catholic point of view.
Even the New Testament itself tells us that the ideal goal is a "
peace" beyond all understanding in which the individual is "
filled with all the fullness of God" (
Ephesians 3:14-21) described later on by the early desert fathers through the use of the words
apatheia (state of imperturbable calm) and
theosis (deification/union with God). The person who dies in this state of perfect union with God, attains heaven immediately, without needing to go through purgatory according to Catholic doctrine (or, for that matter, endless teasing by those devilish dancing girls).
Orthodox theology and liturgy is deliberately oriented around the cultivation of this supreme mystical state:
Orthodoxy and Mysticism - Part 1 - Eastern Orthodoxy and Mysticism: The Transformation of the Senses - Hieromonk Irenei Steenberg | Ancient Faith Ministries
In the silence of the desert, in the solitude of the cell, free from worldly entanglements, one could ascend to the contemplation and knowledge of God, and loving union with Him. This inner tradition of becoming “sharers of the divine nature” (2 Peter: 4 ) — all but lost to modern Christianity — survives, almost unchanged over the centuries in certain corners of the Eastern Orthodox Church...
In particular, Orthodoxy is described very often as a “mystical Christianity”, a Christianity that has not lost a sense of mystery, Christianity with a “mystic” dimension...
The same is true for Catholicism - or at least, its supposed to be.
God permits us by grace to share in His own Beatitude, His own happiness or felicity. This is what the state of heaven essentially consists of.
Theosis, in this life, is a foretaste of that glorious existence of the Blessed in heaven, whereby we participate in the divine nature (as much as is possible by God's power in this life), through the gift of infused contemplative prayer.
This is the foundation and
raison d'etre of Christian monasticism, which for us represents the perfect ideal.